Sumner Redstone Quotes

There are companies that are good at improving what they're already doing. There are companies that are good at extending what they're doing. And finally there are companies that are good at innovation. Every large company has to be able to do all three - improve, extend, and innovate - simultaneously.

I've helped some of my classmates on how to strategize to get to the next level of their businesses. And it's interesting, because here I am sitting there from the entertainment industry and the fashion industry, and I'm giving a billionaire that has a business that's been in his family for 300 years - I'm giving him advice about strategy!

AOL has a great collection of brands, and the question is, 'Can they innovate and scale their business?' And those are very challenging things to do. But I think they are well positioned to grow.

I think we can be the very best place to start a business, to grow a business, to invent a new technology, to change the world, to change the country. But we've got a lot of work to deliver a new California to the people of California.

If we can provide a benefit and make money, it's a chance for us to expand the population of customers we serve, expand the products we put in the marketplace, and reinvent ourselves going forward.

By strengthening the core of our business and leading in digital innovation, we will accelerate growth, enhance our margin, and deliver increased total shareholder returns.

I try to build on our management philosophy. I try to understand what the threats and opportunities are for us. Uh, I try to make sure that we're driving innovation and creative destruction hard enough so we're not blindsided, and that our attitude is to, in starting any initiative, any business, is to focus on how we can create value for others, rather than how we maximize profit, because you can make money focusing on, "How do I maximize profit?"

Innovation and creativity are the juiciest parts of running a business.

A true business opportunity is the that an entrepreneur invents to grow him or herself. Not to work in, but to work on.

Ideas are somewhat like babies - they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company executives do not say, "This is a damn-fool idea." Instead they ask, "What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?"

Doing business is all about providing a good product or service to your customers. A good businessman is he who knows that what is successful today may not be so tomorrow. Technology changes so fast, and so do people's needs and wants. That's why it would do well for a businessman to know how to adapt to change. He must constantly reinvent the business, or it won't last.

Shareholder value theory - the destructive idea that companies should be run solely for the benefit of shareholders - has led to financialized businesses that do not invest in the areas that will lead to future growth or the invention of useful new products.

Risks are a measure of people. People who won't take them are trying to preserve what they have. People who do take them often end up having more. Some risks have a future, and some people call them wrong. But being right may be like walking backwards proving where you've been. Being wrong isn't in the future, or in the past. Being wrong isn't anywhere but being here. Best place to be, eh?

If the spirit of business adventure is dulled, this country will cease to hold the foremost position in the world.

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

For CEOs today, it's all about acheieving growth and efficiency through innovation. It's not about product innovation so much anymore as about innovating business models. process, culture and management.

Grow with discipline. Balance intuition with rigor. Innovate around the core. Don't embrace the status quo.

The greatest million dollar insight I can give anybody is find a big problem and then solve it in a big way.

Everyone can tell you the risk. An entrepreneur can see the reward.

By saying Make in India, we are not only inviting companies for cost-effective manufacturing, but also giving them an opportunity of a large market for their products.

The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.

Money is not a goal. The goal is to make companies grow, develop, be competitive, be in different areas, be efficient to have a great human team inside the company.

We just have to go at 100 miles an hour in all our businesses, be they television broadcasting, be they magazine publishing, be they subscription television, be they online, be they gaming. We just have to go at one hundred miles an hour.

We have to acknowledge that we can't look to manufacturing or natural resources to drive growth like we have in the past. Human capital, talent, and knowledge are our most important resources now. Every city has hidden seeds of opportunity waiting to be nurtured. Places like Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh are among my favorite cities. They have great universities, clusters of innovation across a range of industries, and pools of innovative and creative talent to build on.

I did something rather innovative that my competitors didn't like: I took out a full-page advertisement in the Yellow Pages that listed an office on the east side of Cincinnati, and another office on the west side, while every other heating/air-conditioning company had only one location and one phone number. I was the citywide company. In fact, our 'westside office' was just an answering service taking telephone message. From the start we appeared to be a big company.